


Rain

by babel



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-23
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-14 20:31:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babel/pseuds/babel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's raining..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rain

"It's raining," Alex says. His voice is quiet, but he's been silent so long that the sound of it startles Tim out of his numb stupor.

Alex is looking upward with a kind of wonderment that makes him seem young, and for a moment, Tim isn't afraid of him. For a moment, Tim forgets that Brian is lying on the hospital floor bleeding and maybe dead, and he isn't afraid.

He stares at Alex for a long time, trying to keep this memory and the one before it.

* * *

"Just, try it again," Alex says distantly, clearly in tortured artist mode after about fifteen perfectly fine takes of the same scene. "Brian, I need you to really _feel_ it. Yeah?"

Tim strains to keep from rolling his eyes, but Brian just shrugs. "Okay."

Alex nods. "From 'It's raining.'" He holds up three fingers, then two, then one.

"It's raining," Tim says. "I--"

"Are we going to add the sound in later?" Brian asks suddenly.

Alex clenches his jaw, then slowly answers, "Obviously. Are you _ready_ to go again?"

"Yeah."

"Good." Alex gives them three again.

Tim draws in a deep sigh. "It's raining. I guess we have to cancel the bonfire."

"It was a bad idea anyway."

"What makes you say that?"

"It wouldn't have changed anything. I don't belong here anymore." Brian bows his head slightly, furrowing his brow to convey some emotion, but Tim can see it's a little flat. "I keep thinking about killing myself. Not like planning it or anything. Just... I don't know. I think about it."

"Jesus..." Tim counts out five beats in his mind, just like Alex told him to. "C'mon, it can't be that bad."

"It's not. Listen."

Alex is quiet for a long moment, then he sighs heavily. "Let's take a break."

"I don't know what you want, Alex," Brian says as he heads for the kitchen. "I'm going to grab something to drink."

Tim leans against the wall and pulls out a cigarette, but he just fidgets with it, because they're at Alex's house. "Maybe if you just, like, told us what it's about."

"I did." Alex sits on the floor, folding his legs.

"You were talking about foils and foreshadowing and stuff. That's not exactly _explaining_ it. It's like. Suddenly, he's talking about killing himself? Then we're listening to the rain? I mean, _I_ don't get it."

Alex huffs a sigh. "He's not talking about killing himself. He's talking about _thinking_ about killing himself."

"Uh, okay." Tim shrugs, putting his cigarette behind his ear. He wants to go outside with it, but something is bothering him about this. "So he's talking about thinking about killing himself, then he wants to listen to the rain."

"How long have we been in this room today?"

Tim blinks at him. "Like. Five hours."

"Pretty long time, right?" Alex leans his head back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. "Imagine it was five days instead. Or five years."

"Kinda feels like that," Tim mutters.

Alex ignores him. "You get myopic after a while. It's like the outside stops existing." He frowns a little. "I don't know. It probably doesn't make sense, just. When I was a kid, I got really sick. Some kind of respiratory thing? Anyway, I was in the hospital _forever_ , and it was pretty far off from the highway, so I never even heard cars or anything going past, so it was like the hospital room was the whole world. It had been a really dry summer, and I remember one day, it just started pouring. Out of nowhere, like it does when it hasn't rained for a long time."

"Yeah," Tim says softly, wishing he didn't have his own faded memories of hospitals, that he didn't suddenly know _exactly_ what feeling Alex is talking about. "So, it wasn't just the one room anymore."

"There was an outside, and I wanted to get better." Alex smiles a little. "I wanted to get better, so I could go back out there."

They're both quiet for a long moment, not quite able to look at each other until the door swings open and Brian's back with a bottle of soda. He looks back and forth between them. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Alex says, pushing himself back up to his feet. "I think I have enough for today. I can piece something together."

Brian gives Tim a curious look, but Tim just forces a grin.

* * *

The rain keeps tapping against what's left of the roof, like an insistent finger on their shoulders, reminding them.

"Yeah, it's raining," Tim croaks out, his throat raw from coughing.

Alex hears him and slowly, he looks over at him. His eyes are glazed, like he doesn't know where he is. Like he doesn't know why Tim's hurt.

Tim holds his knees tight against his chest. He's beginning to tremble again. "But we're not going to get better this time, are we."

Alex just blinks at him, then he looks away as if he heard something somewhere deeper in the hospital. He stalks out of the room in long, strangely even strides, and the sound of rain begins to fade back into silence.


End file.
